{"id":119,"date":"2015-04-26T09:50:57","date_gmt":"2015-04-26T09:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/csm210469\/?p=119"},"modified":"2022-10-21T15:50:38","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T15:50:38","slug":"customers-say-thats-stupid-to-call-center-methods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/customers-say-thats-stupid-to-call-center-methods\/","title":{"rendered":"Customers Say “That’s Stupid” to Call Center Methods"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CallAn online survey of consumers reveals that they don\u2019t get good service from call centres.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00e0ret\u00e9 business services decided to undertake an online survey of UK consumers in order to understand their opinions of the calls centres with which they deal and the high level findings of this survey, to which over 60 people responded, are examined\u00a0here.<\/p>\n

Consumers say they don\u2019t get good service from call centres, with a staggering majority finding they need to make repeat calls to get things done. The issues highlighted that most annoyed people were around inordinate queuing and holding, unnecessary and unhelpful IVR and call routing mechanisms, and standardisation\/ scripting of calls.<\/p>\n

People are generally against the idea of off shoring, either in principle or because of service, language or staff treatment issues, with half of respondents saying they might or definitely would take their business away from a company if it sent its call centre operations to a cheaper offshore location.<\/p>\n

Consumers believe that the target-driven approach to call centre management is stupid and they would prefer staff to take as long as it takes to deal with their call and do everything right first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s madness that call centres have become so internally focussed they\u2019ve forgotten the customers they exist to serve,\u201d says Alison J Widdup, Managing Director of \u00e0ret\u00e9 business services ltd. \u201cCompanies need to learn to look at themselves from the customer\u2019s perspective and design their services against customer needs and wants\u2013 it\u2019s not just excellent customer service, it\u2019s cost-effective too!\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Bradley, author of \u2018Inconvenience Stores: One Year in UK Customer Service\u2019 and lead assessor for the Unisys\/ Management Today Service Excellence Awards agrees. \u201cContact centre employees, in my experience, are constrained by a way of thinking that would be more in tune with the industrial revolution than in the service industries of the UK today. Organisations must recognise that their processes must be driven by both customers and employees if they want to differentiate. Very few come up to scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are the main findings of the survey:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. No-one said they received \u201cExcellent\u201d service from call centres.
\nIndeed only 7% said they rated the service they get from the call centres they deal with as \u201cGood\u201d. 34% said the service they got was \u201cSatisfactory\u201d. This means that some 56% of the respondents replying adversely, saying that the service was either \u201cnot very good\u201d (31%) or \u201cvery poor\u201d (25%).<\/p>\n

2. 19% of comments describing what made call centre service good said \u201cThey can help you\u201d, which included responses such as \u201cwhen they can help you straight away\/ 1st time\u201d, \u201cempowered to act\/ can make decisions\/ use their initiative\u201d \u201cthey do what I ask\u201d and \u201caccuracy\u201d. Next, with 16%, was \u201cPrompt response\u201d, which included answers including \u201cprompt response\u201d, \u201cspeed\u201d, \u201cget to right person quickly\u201d, and \u201cno queues\/ less waiting or holding\u201d. The next two priorities were staff having \u201cthe right attitude\u201d (for example \u201cthe right attitude\u201d, \u201cfriendly, helpful or polite \/ courtesy\u201d, \u201cpersonality\u201d and \u201cwanting to help\u201d) and \u201cno rushing\u201d (\u201ctake the time to understand my query\u201d, \u201cno rushing or hurrying\u201d and \u201clistening\u201d), being 12% and 8% of comments respectively.<\/p>\n

3. Only 2 respondents to the survey said they never have to make repeat calls to make sure things get done right. One person did not respond. This means that some 95% of consumers in the survey said they had to make repeat calls to make sure things were done. More worryingly for the industry, however, some 46% of respondents found they had to make such repeat calls either quite often (23%) or regularly (23%)<\/p>\n

4. When asked what made service poor, by far the most popular responses (13.5% of categorised responses) were in relation to connection issues (e.g. queues, holding and getting cut off, not being able to get through), closely followed by issues in relation to IVRs and automated responses (12.8% of categorised responses). The next key area identified (10.9% of categorised responses) was not doing or able to do what’s asked (e.g. not doing what’s asked, failure to follow up, not authorised or able to deal or give right answer).<\/p>\n

5. When asked whether they would take their business away from a company if it sent its call centre operations abroad, the responses to the survey were divided. 5% did not respond, and the remaining respondents were split, with a slight majority responding positively to the question. Some 13% of respondents said they would take their business away from a company if it sent its call centre offshore, and 37% said that they might. 20% said they probably would not take their business away if a company off shored its call centre, and only a quarter of respondents said they would not take their business away in this circumstance.<\/p>\n

6. The survey offered a number of choices to the question \u201cWhat is most important to you when you contact a call centre?\u201d Just over a third of consumers want to speak to staff that know what they are talking about, and a sixth want call centres to do what they ask right first time. The next two priorities (both with 12% of responses) were that respondents didn\u2019t want to queue for too long and wanted to be able to speak to a person when they did get through.<\/p>\n

7. Call centre staff have targets to make sure they don\u2019t spend too long dealing with any one customer\u2019s query. The survey asked which of the following applies most to consumers\u2019 opinion of this statement:<\/p>\n

(a) That\u2019s stupid \u2013 I want staff to take as long as it takes to deal with my call and do everything right
\n(b) I don\u2019t have an opinion about this
\n(c) That\u2019s sensible \u2013 managers need staff to work quickly<\/p>\n

5 people had no opinion\/ did not respond, and only 2 people chose option c, meaning that a staggering 89% of respondents to the survey said that such an approach is stupid and that they want staff to take as long as it takes to deal with their call and do everything right.<\/p>\n

About the Author<\/strong><\/p>\n

Better for Everyone<\/a> offers call centre service that are intelligent, full of integrity and initiative, and totally focused on achieving outstanding results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An online survey of consumers reveals that they don\u2019t get good service from call centers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[12,145],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36034,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions\/36034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}